You are a dead, failed video game character wandering through the recesses of the Random Access Memory, trying to find peace in the final moments of your existence before being deleted forever... ...but forget that. The real story is that Continue?

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“It probably takes a certain kind of player to really appreciate how cerebral it is, but for those who can, it’s astounding. I have never had a game evoke the thoughts and feelings that Jason Oda pulled out of me in my time with Continue?9876543210.”
A – Gamertell

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You are a dead, failed video game character wandering through the recesses of the Random Access Memory, trying to find peace in the final moments of your existence before being deleted forever...

...but forget that. The real story is that Continue? is an existential metaphor that explores the finite nature of existence and the beauty and tyranny of our desires within it.

From the developer:

For fans of cerebral games such as Gone Home, The Novelist, and Papers Please.

This is one of those love it or hate it experimental art games. Regardless of whether you like it or not, I ensure you that it is like nothing you've ever played before. It's less about action and strategy and more about taking an emotional and philosophical journey that allows the player to explore his or her own sense of mortality. You will be very, very confused along the way, but your interpretation of this confusion is what the game is all about. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is not looking for something very weird and different. Continue? is for the type of person that appreciates odd, poetic word play, interpretation of the abstract, and existential philosophy.

Some games we play to kill time on a long commute, some we play at home to blow off steam after a hard day’s work, and some games are about escaping into a world more magical than our own. Continue? is meant to be played late at night with some wine or weed, when you're feeling quiet and contemplative.

Everything in Continue? has a deeper meaning behind it. All of the strange places you go to, people you talk to, and scenarios you go through are part of a greater idea that I hope you spend a second or two trying to figure out and interpret...or not. You can also just play the damn thing.

What happens to dead video game characters?

In the garbage dump of the Random Access Memory, you travel from town to town, meeting people who offer you their lightning and their prayer. Lightning clears the way for you to move forward and prayer builds shelters in a distant town where you must frequently hide to avoid being deleted into nothingness by the garbage collector. Along the way, you are thrust into many battle challenges, the outcome of which affects your shelters. There is ultimately, no way to escape the garbage collector, but running from it buys you time to think, wander, contemplate, and hopefully be at peace with the inevitability of your deletion.

Each game randomly assigns you 1 of the 6 characters and 6 of the 11 areas. There is no set order to the stages of the game.

Development

Continue? was inspired by existential road trips into nowhere, Peruvian jungle drugs, and a brush with death while lost in the mountains of New Mexico. It is a quest for wonder, contemplation, and peace.

For starters i must state i like Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP so trying out this game was something i looked forward to despite negative reviews.

These two games share a lot in their way of telling the narrative - or not telling. It is much to the player to figure out things yourself. Just fine with that - there are not that many games on Steam that are 'artsy' like this and are yet able to provide a experience without becoming some kind of weird ego trip for the dev.

Unfortunately Continue?9876543210 goes for a more action oriented road despite having a somewhat more undrestandable universe where events take place (inside a computer). This is this game downfall since after the early interest goes away all that is left is a frantic action game where you try to mass enough shelters to survive data purge and enough lighting strikes to open a exit path. You also better learn the ropes with the action scenes quick since you cannot survive long if you need to start paying foo (money) or car parts (continues) to go on.

I found the lore interesting. No gods to pray to, just fading memories and void in the computer ram when the purge comes to eliminate the survivors. Too bad this marvelous setting gets lost under the frantic action.

This game has got all the components for a cult classic. unfortunately it will not be so. Designed differently 'my lightning, my prayer' could be almost as well known saying as 'the cake is a lie'.

edit: last line was lost. To conclude: i still recommend the game since this is a unique experience and despite the miss on the action design this game makes you think. For that i like it and i recommend you try it. It is quite reasonably priced in the store also.

I don't know why people haven't tagged it this way, but its obvious that this game is a roguelike/lite behind the messages and themes that it contains. Jason Oda covers the whole story aspect pretty well in the about section of the store page, so I will focus my review on the game beneath the facade.

The game mentions that you take on 6 out of 11 levels each playthrough, but these 11 levels appear to be split into two different types where there arent any major differences other than the graphics/map layout for levels of the same type. The first type being a tag/hide and seek with npcs and the second, more frequent kind, is an open town where you talk with the npcs and try to gather keys,resources, and information. This repetition would be boring if it wasn't for the short minigames in between.

There are at least 5 different types of minigames ranging from platforming to Galaga to zelda dungeons and these different types can come in varying difficulties. If you succeed at the minigames, there is much to gain, especially if you play them perfectly, but they can also be rather dangerous

First off of the roguelike checklist, randomness. Random characters, random levels, random npcs, random minigames, randumb... The first two don't really make a difference, but the random npcs are what make the game. You'll have to get clues and keys from these npcs, but not all are to be trusted. The npcs never seem to lie about information, so aside from getting some nonsense one liner that wastes your time talking to the npc, the worst they will do is sell you a trapped room. However, since you can get free, safe rooms from the rounds, the npcs really are the least of your problems. The information from the npcs will make otherwise random choices definite, but if you are really desperate for time or resources you can guess questions, although you don't really need to do that to beat the game.

The worst of all randomness is the lightning. The first kind of lightning is used to pave the way to an exit, but there are several exits and its possible that your lightning will hit an empty space, so it is easy for the lighting to be spread out and still not have an exit. These rolls will make or break your runs, they are the difference between having to focus all of your resources just to make it to the next level and being able to safely farm resources with impunity. Then there is the matter of having to find shelter in the storms. The randomness here has the potential to be more punishing when you have few buildings. Some buildings can take 1 or 2 lightning bolts and still stand for the next storm, but too few buildings and these tankier buildings are likelier to be destroyed. Despite all of the possible ways you can get ♥♥♥♥ed by the dice, you do have a decent bit of leeway to messup. Even if you get a few bad dice rolls, you should be able to make those up with resources from playing the minigames well.

Then there is the matter of death. You can use your various resources to get second chances once you 'die', but when you run out of those, you must start from the beginning. Additionally, the penalty when using buildings to revive gets increasingly severe, while using money to revive, while a static cost, will prevent you from getting more buildings/lightning.

What do you get for replaying this game? Mostly you just get to see different specs of story/dialogue; however, actually seeking out the in game diaries will be detrimental to progressing to the end, but I suppose that's just part of the message with this kind of game. You'll see the different level art styles and see some different minigames, but thats about it. Some roguelikes require you to play the game over and over to get direct benefits or crucial knowledge, but any useful knowledge is rerolled with each new game aside from knowing how to play a specific minigame.

In the end, its not close to being the hardest game of the genre since you dont need a truly perfect run to beat the game, but it isn't too simple either. Players have the option of playing the way the developer would, but you could also speedrun it too if you wanted to. I recommend both playing to win and playing to explore in order to get the most out of this game. Finally, for your own sanity, do not play this game in full screen mode unless you want to make it even harder, perhaps impossible.

Before we continue we must ask ourselves: what is an experience? Not what is a game, because that is almost too broad to bother trying to put into words. But what is an experience? What is something you enjoy experiencing?

I cannot define this for all of you. An experience changes for each person- it is a variable that makes each person who they are.

Continue?9876543210 (wow that was fun to type out on the keyboard, I slid my finger down the number keys like some sort of badass) is definitely an experience. Whether it is a good one or a bad one is up to you. I personally felt like it made me think a lot about my life and what I take out of it, but I personally do not feel that much of the game other than the thought it provokes lives up to the price I paid for it, even at this discounted price of 8 dollars I paid for it. I personally think thinking should be free. What should be paid for is how the developer makes you think- either through visuals or audio or even story and gameplay.

The gameplay in this game is very basic. You run around and talk to people who usually just jabber on about strange things, but sometimes they open doors for you, and sometimes they sell you things. You are able to choose "lightning" or "prayer" when you enter these doors, and what these mean are up to the player to interpet, but what they do is either randomly spawn lightning to clear the path ahead or spawn a house in a town that is crucial to survive the later stages of the game. After 45 seconds to a minute though, garbage collection or something similar runs and takes you down to play a combat based minigame. After too many of these though, your game ends- but progressing to the next area resets this. So you are in a battle against time to progress to each area.

This gameplay sounds fine, but it is very repetitive. I was about to quit and take a break after the third one of these, but then I realized that there is no save feature in the game- the point is to play the game in one sitting it seems. And so I druged on (and how fitting to relate to the plot of the game), hoping the game wouldn't be TOO much of this. While the gameplay is unique and quirky, after the 3rd or 4th time through, it just gets old.

The music and the graphics are fitting to the theme of the game, but leave much to be desired. I found the graphics and music just plain boring to look at and listen to, and while there are some flashy scenes and very well done graphical choices during cutscenes, the levels look somewhat all the same in exception to a few that look amazing (the level where you're chasing down your reflections in the sea comes to mind) and in the end I just grew tired of it all very quickly.

It's very ironic that a game where you have to find peace with yourself grows harder and harder to get through. I found myself getting very bored with this game very quickly. But it's not about the game right? It's about the experience!

Well that my friends, I do not think is worth my 8 dollars. While it made me begin to think, I feel the game ITSELF did not make me think but rather the themes of it did. I apologize if that may be a mouthful, but it is hard to describe a game like this into words. In simpler terms, I feel like I could have just poked around the website of continue9876543210.com and gotten the same feelings I did instead of playing the game. And for that, I do not give it my personal reccomendation.

But experiences change for everyone. Who knows? Maybe you will enjoy it more than I did.

A rich experience focused on the inevitable. You follow your main character's journey on the acceptance of his deletion by traveling and consulting with the inhabitants of other locales moments before their Garbage Collection. You have two primary options when speaking with the villagers, lightning or prayers. Lightning will help you escape the current level, or access secret areas that will aid you achieve your closure. Prayers will create a shelter based in your own town, which will protect the player from the deletion storm - literally lightning that deletes objects. Your ultimate goal is to survive long enough so the main character accepts his fate. The attitude at the time of their deletion depends on which villages you have been to, how many, and any "secret" areas you have been to which includes objects from your past and present.

The combat is fairly varied, but not overly complex. It does require skill, and this is certainly not a game you can skate by on without thinking what you are doing. To receive lightning or prayers from certain people, you might need to remember a fact about the town said by another villager. The combat can vary from side-scrolling challenges, to zelda-esque dungeon crawling, to arena "kill-house" style challenges. Depending how well you do can give you bonus lightning or keys which open doors in the villages, which allow you to speak to more villagers. I would advise against those who think the combat itself is the only reason to get the game- you will be dissapointed.

In addition to the combat and memorization, the skill of time-management is needed as well. Each village only has a certain amount of time before it's expiration. You have to prioritize what you need done. This is indicated by a countdown timer in the upper-right, once it hits zero there is a "stage" of degradation (Which varies how many there are by village). You will then enter a random combat scenario. Upon completion, you will return to the village which will have become slightly more hostile. Deletion monsters will roam the village which will delay you in your quest for shelter and closure.

It's an emotional ride that is open to your own interpretation. It does a grim subject matter well and was emotionally captivating enough to tug me along. And for that I am thankful.

Edit: Just would like to clarify on something some reviewers seem to have missed (Even though it's in the instructions). This game does have an auto-save feature each time you load a new area.